Urgle.
Trip Start
Sep 04, 2006
1
22
29
Trip End
Dec 2006
London,
United Kingdom
Thursday, November 9, 2006
McDonald's: The service personnel take your order, shove you your food, and you are dispatched to eat it as you see fit. Everything is the same, you are just another face in the line. It is cheap and it will do the trick. Only in desperate situations does it really hit the spot.
Now, your favorite casual dining restaraunt (Appleby's, Calhouns, etc.): You are greeted and served. If you have a question it will be answered and the goal of the staff is to serve you and make your experience a good one so you will leave satisfied. It is a little more expensive, but in the end you are jovial and sated.
McDonald's = the British Medical System
Casual Dining Restaraunt = the American Medical System
At pretty much everyone's urgings, I went to the walk-in clinic connected to a hospital near our hotel. I queued, filled out my paperwork, queued again, saw a doctor for no more than 5 minutes (no exaggeration), got a prescription and queued again, then had to queue to collect it. This whole process took a little more than 3 hours, which apparently isn't bad time here.
That done, I went back to our hotel and sat alone in my room while everyone else was at a play (Therese Raquin, so perhaps I would rather have missed it), took my meds, and tried to go to sleep. This was slightly hampered by the ache in my entire body, my hot face, severely congested head, inability to hear, speak, or swallow, and tonsils that were threatening to emerge from their normal residences and throttle me.
At roughly midnight, when I couldn't generate the will power to move, Dr. Aarnes (one of our professors) and Eva (lots of friend points for this. Lots of them) escorted me back to the hospital.
I almost thought that the doctor took me seriously this time.
When I was there earlier that day, I had been told that I had a cold and a sore throat and might be developing tonsillitis, so take this if I felt any worse. I got words for you buddy. I KNOW WHAT A COLD FEELS LIKE, THIS IS NOT A COLD. Anyway, this doctor treated me like a person, albeit a stupid one who is making a big fuss over a high fever. We emerged from that hole at about 3 a.m. and went back to the hotel. My fever was lower, my throat was somewhat more numbed, but mostly I was just angry. Maybe it is my pompous America mentality that, if I feel that wretched, I don't like being treated like a waste of time, especially at three in the morning.
There, I almost feel better already.
Try not to trip on my enormous soapbox on your way out.
A
